Staff Voices: Pam Fout

Written By: Ian Silvester

Behind every information system and software update is a team of specialists dedicated to making sure things run smoothly on the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith campus. Behind that team is Pam Fout, associate director of IT, and her 43 years of service to the university.
 
Originally from Kansas, her family moved to Van Buren following her sixth-grade year to be closer to extended family. She has been here ever since and still calls Van Buren home.
 
Growing up across the river from the UAFS campus, then Westark, Fout recalls knowing about the school but says she “didn’t think much about going to college.” Tragedy struck at home, leaving Fout and her mom getting by on their own. In an effort to help, she got a job working for an accountant.
 
“I did not like that,” she said with a laugh. “I decided very quickly that wasn’t what I wanted to do the rest of my life.”
 
Searching for a new direction, Fout turned to a friend attending Westark, who suggested she look into a computer degree. It was the puzzle piece to her life Fout was missing.
 
“Once I started classes, I knew it was something that I was going to enjoy,” Fout beamed. “I always like to solve puzzles, and to me, that’s what programming is. You’ve got a problem that you’re trying to solve, so it’s just like a puzzle; you just figure out how the pieces fit together.”
 
From 1976 to 1978, she continued putting the pieces together for her educational puzzle. She graduated from Westark with an Associate of Applied Sciences degree – becoming the first in her family to earn a college degree. After a brief stint at Rheem, Fout returned to Westark in April of 1980 and has been here ever since.
 
“It just speaks to how good a place it is to work,” she said. “Pretty much anybody that knows me knows how long I’ve been here, and they know that I wouldn’t have stayed if I hadn’t liked it.”
 
During her four decades at UAFS, Fout has participated in two software conversions, now on the third with Workday. She remembers starting at UAFS using keypunch cards to program instructions on computers and witnessing the college become a four-year university – which she took advantage of by earning her bachelor’s degree in IT in 2004.
 
As she approaches retirement, Fout has turned to genealogy, a pastime she enjoys that helps her put the pieces of her family and past together. One of her most significant accomplishments was tracing her mom’s family back five generations despite the common maiden name of Smith.
 
She hopes to take some time to travel to the Midwest to visit where her family called home over the generations. But with a chuckle, she says it won’t be until the Workday conversion is complete.
 
Since 1976, UAFS has been a piece of Fout’s puzzle, and Fout a piece of the UAFS puzzle for nearly as long. She will continue to serve the workplace she loves, and when she retires, it will be with a “sense of satisfaction of accomplishing something that’s going to help somebody else on campus.”

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